


La vie n'est pas belle

by sarahxsmile



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: M/M, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, some disturbing violence/imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-11
Updated: 2014-08-11
Packaged: 2018-02-12 19:08:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,379
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2121342
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sarahxsmile/pseuds/sarahxsmile
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It was winter when you were born, on a would-be-important day that no one remembers, into a world that wanted to hate you immediately; into a world that would love you when you learned to kill for them instead of only for yourself. </p><p>Or </p><p>A telling of portions of Levi's life</p>
            </blockquote>





	La vie n'est pas belle

**Author's Note:**

> I'm sorry about second person but it's the best way I write. I guess decided to see just how grim I could make Levi's life/backstory so you know. I tried. The majority of this was written before knowing anything about how Farlan and Levi met so keep that in mind.
> 
> Self-beta'd so any mistakes are my own, though I do hope they've been kept to a minimum. 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading!

It was winter when you were born, on a would-be-important day that no one remembers, into a world that wanted to hate you immediately; into a world that would love you when you learned to kill for them instead of only for yourself. In the underground, the cold was colder even without snow to blanket everything in white and grey. It was a miracle you lived, that you didn't freeze, that you weren't deformed. That your mother didn't throw herself down the stairs like her friends told her to. 

She fell in love with you immediately, tired and the sweat on her skin making her shake even worse as she held you. She smiled and cooed and sang, happy like she never knew how to be. Her fingers were delicate on the curves of your ears, the swatch of dark hair on your head. She called you beautiful.

She never saw you smile.

The man who found you pried you from her bloody arms with cold hands and he smelled like whiskey. He called you Levi first.

These are all things that you do not remember.

 

Most of what you do remember from your very young childhood is a combination of intense flashes of memory—a streetlamp flickering through the cracks in the walls, the callouses on your feet cracking, a little girl in a tattered dress—and being hungry all the time; gut aching and reaching out with grasping fingers to all the other hungry people. Mostly they just spat on you until you learned not to reach. 

You taught your fingers to be quick instead, like all the other kids who survived did. You learned to be quick and quiet and you were learning to hate adults, because they hated you. They were the ones who spat, who liked to trick kids into giving them food, or took them into back alleys and didn’t bring them back out. 

You didn't have friends. You didn't want them. You would have had to share. 

You remember the way the ground slicked with ice in the winters, all the damp making things that much more dangerous. There was a man, who sat on a corner under a cracked streetlamp, and he reached for you every day, would have taken you into an alley, you knew. Your stomach heaved when his fingers brushed the scraps of your pants, the thin skin of your ankle. 

But in spite of everything about him that made you sick, there was one day when he didn't reach and you were surprised, curious in a way you later learned to suppress. 

In spite of every danger you knew, you slowed, stopped by him and crouched. Your stomach roiled when you saw the ice and the way his limbs were blackened at the edges, frozen to the ground. His eyes blinked open, grey and dull, and you ran. He was still there the next time you walked by, but this time you knew that, if you had looked, his eyes wouldn’t have opened. He was still in the way that people weren’t. 

You learned that it was better when people died in the winter, because they didn’t decay like they did in the summer. In the summer, the humid, consuming heat made everything worse. Thick and rancid, bloating and bursting ick in the darker dark corners that you learned very quickly to avoid.

You learned how to hold your breath and to keep your eyes unfocused.

 

When you met him, it was because you noticed him watching you as you walked down the street. Days of watching. 

His eyes made your skin crawl, like the frozen man’s had, because they were dark and maybe wanting, and you remember glaring as much as you could because you'd learned that watching people usually meant disappearing if you weren't careful.

He had approached and offered candy that you wouldn't eat, refused to. It made him laugh, but it wasn't the kind of laugh that scared you-even if it might have scared other people. He said he knew who you were, called you by your name.

"Levi," he said, like it was the most important name in the world, and although you knew most things were bad in the world, most people were, you didn't always know how to tell, not yet.

You didn't think he was your father, but he felt like he could be. You thought that if you smiled, you'd smile like that, the way he did. All dangerous and sharp, and his hands were big on your sides as they lifted you up high high high, rough voice as he held you speaking you're going to learn.

You were six, or somewhere around there, and it was hot even underground, midsummer damp and dirty. He said he'd show you the sun. You had seen the sun before, when you ventured up as it was setting. The fading sunlight made people see you more as a child and less as a nuisance. But the way he said it, it was like you missed something. Like there was a secret about it you needed to know, and he wanted to share.

You smiled and he smiled. You didn't know that the redbrown under his fingernails was blood.

You should have run away, buried yourself in the muck between the broken underground concrete and died. Sometimes, in spite of everything it would have changed, you still wish you had.

 

The blood was everywhere everywhere, staining the floor and the walls and the shining innards spilling out of the man's stomach. 

You didn't know what was happening. Kenny said come into the basement and you were excited; he never let you down there. You were banned, only allowed in the upstairs, to clean and study and cook sometimes—though you weren't good at it. You were just beginning to be able to get to the stove properly. 

You went down the old stone steps, the ones that echoed with each footfall, your heart thrashing like a mouse in a trap, and smiling and smiling. You were so happy to be trusted, felt the pride like a rush, like everything you wanted could happen.

He pressed a knife into your hand, one that was twice as long as your palm, and in retrospect maybe you should have gutted him instead (now, you wonder what his guts would have looked like spilled all over the floor but you know—they would have looked like everyone else’s).

Kenny had left the man untied and shoved you at him and all you had seen were bloodshot eyes and hands snarling for your throat. And then the knife in your hand in his belly ripping away until he was open and leaking everywhere. You remembered him trying to hold himself in until he couldn't anymore. 

And suddenly-suddenly you were on your knees with a hand on the back of your neck and you didn't want this. Everything shifted, like a gear grinding forward that had never moved. Or maybe one that was forced to stop, stripped of everything that made it useful.

Your face rubbed into the blood and dead flesh, your vision red before you closed your eyes. You wished you had gotten them shut a moment earlier. Blood and dirt stinging tears down your face.

"You'll learn," the familiar voice said, like metal scraping on glass, and you vomited all over the dead body, and he rubbed your face in that too.

 

The first time you ran away, it was nighttime. Kenny had taken you above ground, the sun too bright in your eyes, and introduced you to some men who smelled like tobacco and expensive wine. You remembered one catching your chin in his hands. His smile was yellow-white teeth and bloated tongue.

"He will do," he said, "A night or two should be enough." You were old enough to know what he wanted and part of you wished you weren't.

Kenny's laugh was like the cracks between the stairs, the mold on the walls. 

"Take him."

The remainder of the day passed slowly. You remember being bathed, scrubbed and scrubbed until you felt like your flesh would peel away. Lavender and roses were thick on your skin, in your hair, and you liked being clean but you didn't like this scent. You liked the scent of your soap and the way you washed your own skin, the way you felt afterward. This didn’t feel clean at all.

Left in his room, you would have gone then, but he came before you could get the window open. He smelled like sweet and sour, like wine. Your skin crawled, spiders up and down your spine, when his hands touched your shoulders, when he pressed his nose into your neck.

He fell asleep eventually. You tried to forget the taste of him bitter in your mouth and acrid in your belly and you threw it all up, all over his floor, before you crawled out the window. His snoring covered the way it slammed behind you.

 

The last time you ran away was because you were tired, and he was gone. Tired of all the blood and the way he would play with them first. Talking and asking. He liked to pretend, teasing the knife around their throats. 

But he would leave, long moments in time, days and days of time, and you didn't know where he went. And you didn't like him, maybe never did. At something teenage, you left. Left the house that wasn’t quite as broken as all the others, the one that smelled like the soap you used to scrub it clean and all the blood you could never wash away completely. You left, knowing you would probably be okay.

He had taught you how to kill every way he could, clean and efficient—though he only ever killed one way if he could help it. Throat and knife, the soft, gurgling death of drowning in their own blood. You were so fucking sick.

You found Farlan soon after, or maybe he found you—memory slurring the lines between before knowing him and after—when he kept trying to know you for everything you were rumored to be able to do. It was hard to say yes but he wanted you, looked at you with a grin that was all sly and sincere. You didn’t know how he managed it, but you agreed to tail along with him, though you never said you’d fight for him.

His eyes lit up anyway, and he kept close to you, dragged you with him.

It was probably why everyone turned on him, his fondness for you. But it was also why you both survived.

He had a bloody lip and a black eye and you knew you were bleeding too, felt the cooling wet down the side of your face as you pressed up close to him inside a house you hadn’t known existed. You looked up at the molding ceiling and let out a breath, trying to stay quiet, quiet. You could hear Farlan, feel his body shaking against yours, his breathing ragged from running and fighting, and then there was a breath of a laugh, mingling with the dust sparkling between the light that was shafting in from the window.

You looked over and his eyes were serious on you, smile vague and he reached, fingers through your hair, pulled you in close. Pressed your foreheads together as he thanked you. His eyes were closed, and you watched the way his eyelashes rested on the pale paper of his skin.

You had never felt so light.

Isabelle was dirty when you found her but not, you thought, as dirty as you had been. You wanted to walk away, to let your eyes be unfocused and keep walking, but you couldn’t help it. She needed so badly, and there was something that tugged at you.

You saved her, washed her clean and stole her clothes, and she blossomed in a way that you would never have expected. 

Loud and brash, but she smiled wide, arms wrapped around your shoulders, around Farlan’s. Lips pressing kisses on your cheeks when neither of you expected them. It felt like she was completing something, like the three of you were made to be. 

Learning how to adapt was something that came naturally to you. To all three of you, really. You think that was why you figured out how to use the gear so quickly.

There was a freedom you’d always wanted in it, bounding over rooftops and between buildings. It leapt in your heart and throat. Isabelle cackling on your left and Farlan, quiet and sure, on your right. It was everything you never knew you wanted, and you wanted more.

They did too, their eyes alight with all the promises they could see you wanting to make, that you did make. You wanted to see sky and freedom and you wanted the walls to crumble. 

Survival of the fittest, and you knew the three of you had a better chance than most anyone above ground.

 

When you locked eyes with him for the first time, it swooped low in your gut with a want you hadn’t felt in years, and a kind of fear you were unfamiliar with. The look was barely a moment, but he looked like he knew what he wanted and how to get it, and all that was going to be directed at you.

You did your best to forget it.

 

His name was Erwin and you wanted to hate him so much it was like a horse kick in your gut. Because you couldn’t. You could be angry, seeing red and snarling, but he also brought you past the wall, to a sky like you’d never seen before. 

You didn’t hate him, as much as you wanted to, but it wasn’t like you liked him. 

 

Farlan waved goodbye, and it all went black, and then red. 

 

You didn’t want to be impressed by Erwin, but you couldn’t help it. You wanted to be able to roll your eyes, to scoff and tell him he was an idiot and then kill him because god, you wanted to blame someone so badly. To blame someone who wasn’t you.

But instead, he spoke, and everything shattered. Or maybe fell together, a puzzle that you hadn’t known was jammed together all wrong. And just like that, you were in a partnership with him; trusting him with everything you lied about. 

You watched his back, the cloak fluttering out behind him, as you galloped back towards the walls you hated so much, to where you didn’t feel like you belonged, but you felt like maybe you’d be able to do something that actually meant something.

It wasn’t a feeling that you were familiar with.

 

Erwin was different than what you expected. You had known he was fox smart, but it was so much more now. He wanted your trust, trusted you now. You thought he did. You were pulled into meetings with Mike and Hange like you belonged, like you had always been there.

You kept killing titans. You kept watching people die. 

Erwin came back and watched the bodies burn with you. 

“You should go to bed,” he said to you one night in his office. He had been talking about something, and you had been listening. And then you weren’t listening anymore, you were watching the window heavy eyed, the candle flame standing tall, flickering his reflection on the black pane once or twice.

The cadence of his voice slowed, stopped, and you drew your gaze to him, eyes narrowing. The shadows made the skin under his eyes darker, made him look older than he was. Or maybe that was just the way he looked and you had never noticed before.

“Are you going to bed?” you asked rather than actually responding, though it was difficult for you to fathom why. It wasn’t as though you cared. You knew he probably slept the same way you all did; that is to say, not much, and not well most nights. Passing out from exhaustion on the bad ones—or maybe those were the good ones. You never dreamed then.

You watched as the corner of Erwin’s lips twitched in a smile. Not quite pleasant, but in a way where you couldn’t stop watching them, though you knew you were staring too long. He didn’t say anything else to do with sleeping, instead pointed to the map laid out on his desk. His words sounded familiar; was he repeating himself? You couldn’t be sure. You blinked heavy eyelids and didn’t look at his mouth again.

 

You were pretty sure the problem was that Erwin was remarkably easy to fall in love with. You didn't have enough fingers to count the people you’d seen watching him, his hands, lips. Who got just a little breathless around him, whose fingers twitched in a want to reach out and touch. 

Hange, who watched him with bright eyes, brighter than usual, almost brighter than when they were talking about titans. Too smart for a puppy-dog want for approval, but it was a close thing, you thought.

Mike was close, always close. Nodding and watching and ready. He was one of the few that actually would touch Erwin on occasion, a hand on his arm or a bumping of shoulders when he could manage it. Maybe when he thought no one would notice.

Even Nile, a man you hadn’t met all that much—he left a sour taste in your mouth, like too-old milk—watched Erwin a little too often for your liking. Maybe it could have been explained away by a rivalry of kinds, but no. You didn’t think so.

But Erwin was just a man.

A fact that made it all that much more infuriating when you realized why you were noticing all these things, these people. Him. You didn’t want to be in love; you had never been in love before. You would have punched a hole through your wall if you could have. 

As it was, you ended up breaking your pinky and ring fingers instead. You had just come back from an expedition at least, so you wouldn’t need them for killing titans immediately. Not that it would have stopped you.

You had one of the doctors splint the breaks and ignored all questions to its origin. Erwin eyed your hand and didn’t say anything.

It felt like you scowled until the bones were done knitting back together.

 

You didn’t like thinking about things like this. About Erwin all the time, and about your own kind of self-worth. How much you could never be enough for him, how much you wished you didn’t care. You weren’t one to lie to yourself, no, but it was easiest just not to think about why you didn’t keep mirrors in your room or wouldn’t look at your reflection if you could help it. 

It was easiest not to think of yourself. 

Now, you were humanity’s strongest soldier, and apparently you were worth everything. But it didn’t really feel like it past your ability to kill titans. Your weight was in what you did, and you understood. Killing as many as you could was so, so important. At least, to the people who mattered. To Erwin.

God, but you needed to focus on anything else.

 

Your squads kept dying and you kept living, and you wished and wished that it would get easier to stop remembering how they looked with their skin ripped through and blood everywhere. 

 

You kissed Erwin one day outside of the wall, when everything had very nearly gone to shit, and the two of you were covered in blood that was quickly evaporating away. You kissed him and it all tasted red, and you felt him kiss back before he stiffened.

“I can’t,” he said, brittle voice like river ice thawing, and the world shattered under your feet.

 

The beauty of it was that you didn’t have to think much about it, not really. You could concentrate on other things, things like titans, and training, and the new recruits. On talking to anyone who wasn’t Erwin and on ignoring the way he looked at you sometimes. Like apologies.

You didn’t know what switch it flipped, but suddenly you were voracious, wild like they always thought you were, expected you to be. You tore through people on the training field when you were there, bared your teeth at people who looked at you when you weren’t. You fucked your way through anyone that was willing to—a surprising number, for the amount that pretended they hated you. But they were getting younger, too. Where you came from mattered less as more of them met you only as humanity’s strongest.

Sometimes they tried to talk to you, called you names or cooed, and you shoved your fingers in their mouths, shut the fuck up, because you couldn’t stand to hear their voices. That wasn’t why you were doing this.

You fucked and fought, during training and outside of it, and you avoided Erwin and his looks and the way they curled up in your chest, tight like balls of twine.

 

He saved your life one day in the rain. A day that shouldn’t have reminded you so much of the first time you wanted him, but fuck, it did. 

The wet stuck to his cheeks and his hair; you could feel your own clothes clinging, weighing your body down in the dissipating blood and the water. He turned, half turned, from where he had landed—sometimes you couldn’t believe the speed of your life, the rate at which things happened; one moment you had been inches from death, closing your eyes and maybe, yes, ready and the next—the squelch of mud under his boot, his eyes dark. 

You stared up at him and he turned fully, stepped closer. You felt his hands warm against your wet cheeks, his eyes so so blue—

 

He kissed you that once, that one, breathless time, and then everything went back to the way it was before he saved you. As though you hadn’t seen the desperation and the fear and, after it ended, the regret. 

It was worse when he tried to explain.

“I’m replaceable,” he said, as though that had anything to do with what he did, or how you felt.

“I’m going to die too,” he said, like an excuse, as though the words wouldn’t make you angrier, blood boiling because he was so stupid. As though he couldn’t believe you were so far gone that it didn’t matter if you touched or not before he died because you knew the ache of loss just the same. 

You couldn’t say anything like that though, hadn’t bothered learning how to articulate in nuances and careful explanation. You told him to fuck off.

You wished with everything inside of you that your anger could stave off the cresting waves of want whenever you saw him unexpectedly, but they were always there, always racing the fury and annoyance at his dedication to serving humanity and not any part of himself. 

But the want always won, you were always reminded in fleeting moments of the way he sent your heart thumping too hard in your chest. You didn’t think it had been so obvious before, had it? The ache in your gut and the annoying pounding of your heart. But maybe it had and you had never needed to take the time to notice. 

He treated you like he always had, courteous and smiling, and you wanted to wrap your fingers around his thick neck.

 

The third time you kissed him, neither of you had saved anybody, but it felt like saving something. 

You had been drinking, settled at the end of a long bench, Mike across from you and Hange occasionally pressing right into your side and it felt—good. Better than you had felt in a long time. Maybe better than you had felt ever. The realization was sharp and everything was suddenly very real, not like the soft liquor-haze you had been working yourself into.

You found yourself asking, suddenly, if Erwin was still in his office. Stubbornly ignored the look Hange and Mike shared as you were told that, as far as they knew, yes he was.

And that had you on your feet and striding away, ignoring the way their stares prickled against your back. Erwin was in his office when you pushed the door open, but he wasn’t at his desk. He looked like he was about to leave.

You barely gave him time to speak before you reached up and wrenched him down by the collar, hoping you were bruising him. He stiffened, reached his fingers to curl around your wrists, but he didn’t pull away, didn’t push you away.

“You’re an idiot,” you growled against his lips, biting. He bit back, and you smiled.

 

You woke up with bruises aching in your hips, nothing you weren’t used to, but he was there too. His breathing rough against the off white pillow and you stared for a long moment before you pushed yourself out of the bed. Careful, not waking him. 

On your way past the mirror, you saw dark marks worried onto your neck and you couldn’t help it. You laughed, woke him up with it.

“Levi?” he breathed, voice sleep groggy and confused. You shook your head, clamping down on the bubbling noise. You met his gaze, watching as the haze of sleep began to clear from it, and felt something squeeze in the pit of your stomach. As much as you knew you should leave, should let him be, get ready for the day, you stepped back to the bed. 

“Idiot,” you breathed, pushed him down onto the bed as you clambered back on. He was warm between your thighs, his hair ruffled against the pillows, the morning light shadowing his face. 

His hands cupped around your jaw and the back of your head, pulling you in, and though you had the entire night behind you, all you could think was _finally._


End file.
